Psych Wards and Progressions

I picked up my guitar for the first time in months (years?) today. The last time I played it I was teaching myself to play the solo for Achilles Last Stand by Led Zeppelin. But, that's not the case now, as I found myself struggling at first to remember how to play my favorite chord progression, but with some quick searching I found the chords I was trying to hit and I... I just love playing the three chord progression of the outro to this song. I can't handle the solo it transforms into, not even when I was practicing guitar heavily, but I find playing the chord progression at the end very soothing. For any guitar players out there that are curious, here's the tabs:

     G     D#    C
e|--10-----6-----3----|
B|---8-----4-----1----|
G|---0-----0-----0----|
D|---9-----5-----2----|
A|---x-----x-----x----|
E|--10-----6-----3----|

C is played for two bars making it four bars musically. The tempo and phrasing of the chords is pretty distinctive to the song, just listen to the song at the 6 minute point and it's pretty easy to replicate. Even better and more fun to play when you have it down like I have.



I talked to SilverInkblot recently about an oddly named favorites folder, I'm trying to guess what the acronym of the folder, TBS, stands for (don't give me hints), but I was touched that one of my pieces, two even maybe, had been in the folder and she had this to say.

I read him (Doc) Hearing Half a Conversation a few days ago - he liked it, but not enough for me to add it to my score Now, since he doesn't know any names from here, he'll refer to you as "that friend who was in a mental institution" when comparing your writing to something else I'm reading He really liked the realness of that piece - you knew what it was like cause you'd been there, and he loved that aspect.

I'm honestly flattered her professor, who I dare call prestigious, had that to say about my piece, disregarding the name-calling. I take a strange pride in having been in a psych ward, and I honestly am not sure why. I feel like part of it is because psych wards are so popularly generalized as a place where "crazy people" go. This is really not the case, the psych ward I was in, a very common institution in hospitals nowadays is a temporary ward, and like other wards, there's a children and teen unit and an adult unit. Thankfully, I've never landed myself in an adult unit and don't plan to, but from experience, I know the unit for non-adults is really a place for people suffering from burdens they are just not equipped to carry. I'll give you an example, maybe two.

In my second and last stay at a psychiatric ward, I met a 13 year old boy who had just begun experiencing auditory hallucinations a year before being admitted. And I learned hallucinations are not all they're reported to be. They're not terrifying or spooky, no, what a hallucination is, is disorienting. It distorted his perception of sound, he never experienced 'voices', but rather abstract sounds: stuff like hearing someone enter a room or something falling over when neither of those things happened. And it was downright confusing to him. It didn't make him crazy, but it gave him the presence of 'being off'. We're quick to write off those people who seem off. And that really angers and depresses me if I let it get to me.

The truth was, his hallucinations had become prevalent and frequent when his parents had got a divorce, and subsequently his quality of life suffered. There's a quote from a song I listen to that goes "I guess it is kind of funny when you look at it from a step back how one man can literally buckle under the same pressures other men operate normally under. When you can't breathe, there are people there to breathe for you." Some people really need to learn this, because they haven't yet, and some even refuse to believe this part of life happens.

A psych ward can be those people to breathe for you, I know it was for me and for everybody else who was there with me. I guess, I was reminded of this belief when reading what Lauren said. And I take a lot of pride in it and comfort also. I dunno. Maybe I'm just rambling.